The following is the outline of the first session of our current Sunday School series at Holy Cross. The subject of the series is Catholic Christianity, what it means to be a catholic Christian, to believe catholic beliefs, and to worship as a catholic. The following is the outline of the discussion from Sunday January 20. The series runs until Palm Sunday (through - and including - Sunday, March 9). We meet between the Sunday masses, beginning at 9:30 am.
CATHOLICISM 101
Church of the Holy Cross
January 20, 2008
Part 1
God’s Covenant / God’s People
a. He endowed man with a free will, because he wanted to relate to man in love, not servility.
i. Therefore man was endowed with the ability to reject God.
b. Man rejected God. This rejection poisoned the world. (Cf. Gen. 3.9ff)
c. God was not willing that sin should be a definitive ruining of the world.
d. This history of the human race is a history of God’s patient love following humanity, despite our rebellion (cf. Gen. 3.21) – God from the beginning pursued us with love, encouraged us to return to him, and promised a definitive restoration.
II. Early on God deals with individuals and families – the Patriarchs.
a. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.
III. With Abraham things change somewhat:
a. Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by him… (Gen. 18.18.)
b. This is the people of Israel. you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. (Deut. 14.2.)
c. Israel is God’s “ecclesia” (Greek), or “Church”. (cf. Acts 7.38.)
d. To Israel God revealed the moral law (Exodus 31.18),
e. the right to approach God by sacrifice (Leviticus),
f. the divine blessing (Exodus 6.7), and most importantly:
IV. The promise that God himself would bring about a definitive restoration for the whole world from the midst of Israel – that God himself would come from among them as a vindicator, to undo the brokenness of the very creation by the power of mankind’s sin in the beginning. This promise is not just for Israel, but for “all nations” – the “gentiles”. (Psalm 96 vv. 3 & 10, Is. 11.10, Is. 49.6, Is. 66.19, Jer. 16.19, Zechariah 8.22, Mal. 1.11).
a. Malachi 3.1 et seq: "Behold, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? "For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver…”
b. And Malachi 4 ***
i. Note the promise of Elijah. And see what Jesus says about John the Baptist (Matthew 11.14 passim): …if you are willing to accept it, he is Eli'jah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
V. Then there is the advent of the promised Salvation, the birth of Jesus: But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir. (Gal. 4.4)
a. We are made heirs of what God promised to the descendents of Abraham:
i. And I will dwell among the people of Israel, and will be their God. (Exodus 29.45)
ii. I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. (Jeremiah 24.7)
iii. Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant [“new testament”] with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31.31ff)
iv. Jesus said: Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Mat. 5.17)
v. And St. Paul writes: I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin…. Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles…. if the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11 passim)
b. The whole purpose of God’s choice of Israel, and their receiving of his self-disclosure (his word, his law, his commandments), was to prepare the way for Jesus – the eternal Word made flesh, and his work – the work that saves us from the world’s brokenness-through-sin.
i. the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3.24)
ii. The revelation of the Old Testament is completed and fulfilled in the New Testament.
iii. The old sacrifices are completed and fulfilled in the sacrifice of “Christ our Passover” – the Lamb of God. (cf. Jn. 19.14)
iv. The moral law revealed in the Ten Commandments is completed and fulfilled in the “Beatitudes” – the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5, and Luke 6)
v. The Levitical priesthood of the Old Testament, descended from Aaron, is completed and fulfilled in Jesus, our “Great High Priest” (Heb. 4.14) and the spiritual descent of Christian priests of the “apostolic succession”.
vi. Israel as a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19.6) is completed and fulfilled in the “royal priesthood” of the whole Christian Church: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2.9)
vii. The old sign of circumcision, as the means of incorporation into the old covenant, is completed and fulfilled in the sacrament of Holy Baptism by which we are made members of the new Covenant in the flesh of Jesus, members of the “one Body” of Christ (1 Cor. 12.13, Col. 2.11-12).
viii. In short: All of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, are fulfilled in the Body of Christ, and in his work: the reconciliation of humanity with God, who had desired us and sought to be with us since our initial rejection of Him and the ensuing brokenness of the world and of human relationships. It all comes to a head and a fulfillment in Jesus – his proclamation, his action, and his person. And this proclamation, action, and the very person of Jesus, is perpetuated in the world down to the present in the Catholic Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment